Want to better support your students using Assistive Technology and Augmentative and Alternative Communication?

Come to the AT/AAC Open Lab & Weekly Mini-Trainings! The MDUSD AT/AAC Team will be offering a series of open labs in the 2013-14 school year. These hands-on labs will offer participants an opportunity to explore specific software programs (Boardmaker, Co:Writer, Clicker 6, Adobe Acrobat, Dragon Naturally Speaking, iPad and Android Apps and loads more!) and devices (including communication) in depth, with the guidance of ATAAC staff. Open Labs will begin in October and will happen every Wednesday from 2 to 5pm and every Thursday from 2 to 4pm. Mini-Trainings will be at 3 pm on Thursdays and will alternate between AAC and AT topics. See schedule on back  Click Here for Flyer

Conversations

By Robert Rummel-Hudson from SupportforSpecialNeeds.com

I feel like I want to talk about the events of last week, in which we revisited Schuyler’s IEP from a few weeks ago in order to put in place better speech and language goals than were originally presented to us. I want to talk about the shift in philosophy in her AAC use, how her verbal expressive language isn’t keeping up with what she’s capable of. I want to talk about how she’s been allowed to make some choices that she wasn’t quite ready for, and the work that lies ahead for her and for us. These are the things that have occupied my mind so deeply for so many weeks, so much so that the thought of actually discussing them in detail now feels rather daunting.

So I’ll simply say that conversations have been had, many of them. These conversations could very well lead to big changes, or they could provide a smoke screen, cover for returning to a way of working with her that has been easy, even as it hasn’t worked.

I guess that’s been the recurring theme. Conversations.

There were conversations in the original IEP meeting that were less than productive. Opening salvos, perhaps. “Here’s how things are going to be, and lucky you, dumb parents! All you have to do is sign!”

There were conversations that followed, in which our concerns were expressed, perhaps vigorously, about how Schuyler is communicating, how she is allowed to make herself understood, painfully, and what a very low bar was being set in school for what we should consider to be success. We talked about what she’s capable of communicating when she uses her iPad, and we handed out copies of the poem she wrote a few weeks ago, to teachers who were frankly shocked that the monosyllabic student they thought they knew had written such a thing.

Conversations were had about the future, and how Schuyler desperately needs a total shift in the communication philosophy being followed by every teacher who sees her. We talked about how that change might take place, and about what we want the school district to give. We asked for an outside consultant, one who’s been working with Schuyler and with us, to come facilitate a conversation, a workshop with the whole team. We were told that this was the job of the assistive technology team already in place. We met resistance.

Conversations took place, frank ones, about our lack of confidence in those changes truly being embraced without a facilitator from outside the system. Conversations took place that were difficult to hear, for both sides.

And Schuyler was there for every last one of them. Conversations were had about her, and not without her.

This past week, before the IEP followup, a very different conversation took place. Three of us were on the line; a representative of the school district’s assistive technology team, the amazing speech language pathologist with whom we’ve been consulting and who has come to know Schuyler as a friend, and myself. It was a very good conversation. It was one in which all three of us at one point or another faced ideas and concepts that were new to us. It was a microcosm of exactly the kind of facilitated dialogue that we’re pushing for, and pushing hard. It felt like success.

And the next day, there was the IEP followup. We pushed hard for our own communication goals to be written into the IEP, and we were ultimately successful. We also advocated for this facilitated workshop, but with no concrete decisions made. We made a solid case for it, though. Of that I feel relatively certain. The answer we hope to get from a dialogue like that isn’t one I could even quantify, I said. In a conversation of less than an hour the previous day, three of us opened our eyes to possibilities. A larger conversation? Those possibilities are unimaginable, if only people will choose to hear.

There have been so many conversations of late. Schuyler has been a part of most of them. The SLP with whom she’s worked remotely has had the most interesting perspective, because she’s never really communicated with Schuyler verbally. They’ve communicated via text message mostly, and so the Schuyler she sees is something a little like the fully realized communicator I’ve always imagined her to be one day. As if to bring the point home, she spoke to Schuyler on the phone the day before the meetings began. She got the verbal Schuyler, just brief words, yes and no and bye. She witnessed the kind of verbal expression that has served Schuyler so poorly at school for the last two years.

There has been so much conversation, so many choices to be made, all focused on enabling Schuyler to have the opportunity to fully realize the potential of the technology that so many people worked so hard to provide to her. That technology has changed her life. The early years are crucial to language development. It was almost too late when she first started at the age of five, and we did what we had to do to give her that tool before the doors slammed shut for good, pride and principles be damned. I would do it all over again, except years earlier.

Time was running out for Schuyler. Time is always running out for Schuyler.

So we have the conversations, and she joins them now. One day, she’ll lead those conversations, and she’ll do it with a voice that’s strong and autonomous and eloquent. There’s a lot I’ve gotten wrong with Schuyler, and more that I will screw up in the future. But these conversations? We’ll have these until our voices crack. Because ultimately, if we get this right, these conversations will begin and end with her.

Article HERE.

Augmentative Communication For All

Recently I was speaking with a friend who has worked with special needs kids for a long time. She asked me who Augmentative and Assistive Communication is appropriate for. Many parents have the same question, and in my experience most of it find out about it outside of school-- at conferences, during those late night obsessive internet searches or from other parents. AAC is a subset of Assistive Technology. 

That is too bad, because AAC can be a miracle, a way to tap into the minds of children who are trapped in a body that won't allow them to communicate the way the rest of us do. CAC has been working on the area of Assistive Technology (AT) for two years now to learn more about the District's services and delivery and how they have improved as one of the areas of agreement in the consent decree. 

Under IDEA, IEP teams must consider Assistive Techchnology, including AAC, for every child with a disability. That is all well and good, but who is an AAC user?

Any child who is language delayed or non-verbal is a potential AAC user, regardless of disability type. If your child uses sign language or PECS, or even tries to communicate with you using a variety of strategies like gestures, leading you to things, or vocal approximations, he or she IS already an AAC user-- he or she IS already using alternative means to communicate. 

This means many students with autism, cerebral palsy and other disorders are potential AAC users. You can read a case study of a child with autism using a speech generating device here. You can learn more about the assessment process here.

If you think your child is a potential AAC user, or is an AAC user now, a full AAC assessment can help your IEP team to learn more about what devices and services would be appropriate in supporting their educational progress. 

Free LAMP Workshop in Oakland

WHAT: Putting LAMP (Language Acquisition through Motor Planning ) to Work: AAC Strategies for Promoting the Development of Communication for Individuals with ASD, offered by Prentke Romich Company (PRC)

WHEN: August 19

TIME: 8am 3:30pm

WHERE: Oakland Unified School District:

WHY: This workshop covers AAC implementation strategies for children with ASD, such as: Readiness to Learn, Shared Focus and Motor Planning.

COST: Free

BRING: Vantage Lite, Vantage, Vanguard or laptop computer with the PRC emulator software, if possible.

Register here

Participation Plans

The staff in the Augmentative Communication classroom uses a tool that would, I think, be helpful in other settings. Participation Plans are sometimes developed to support a student's inclusion experiences, but can also be designed to increase language use and social skill practice in full time special education environments, at home and in the community. When a student needs help to develop social and language skills this tool can help the IEP team spend time talking about the what, when and how of creating those supports for development.  The participation plan is designed by the IEP team and describes how goals will be practiced and supported. Participation plans become part of the IEP documents and can give future teams valuable insights about present levels of performance. 

Here are a couple examples from my daughter's plan. Her goals are to increase her appropriate participation and use of natural language with familiar school personnel and typical peers:

Visiting the library 

Greeting and entering

1. With assistant, take books to librarian.
   
2. Make eye contact (prompt as needed).
   
3. Use switch to say: "I am returning my books."
   
4. Show favorite book(s) to librarian by pointing to choices. 
   
5. Use switch to say, "I liked this book!"
   

Selecting Books

1. Select books with buddy by pointing to choice (out of three).
   
2. Buddy reads book, sit in chair and listen, point to things of interest.
   
3. With assistant, use eye gaze board comments page to make comments about book (Cool! Interesting! Funny! Boring!)
   
4. Use switch to say "Please turn the page."
   

Leave taking

1. Use switch to say "Thank you. Goodbye. See you next time"  to buddy and librarian
   

Her participation plan has led to the following results:

• better behavior! More meaningful interactions- rather than being taken to the library, she is going and participating
• More staff at school know Emma and greet her by name in the halls and on the play ground. 
  
• More typical peers know Emma, greet her and invite her to play on the play ground. 
  
• Emma is more familiar with the school campus, and takes us places she knows, like the library, on her own initiative.
  
• Emma is beginning to use pro-social behaviors like greeting, making eye contact and listening in other environments.
  

The participation plan helped the staff change their expectations of Emma but also their understanding of the supports she would need to learn how to participate and their roles in creating and sustaining those supports. 

Gina Hale